St Francis Xavier's Early Learning and Childcare

Big fun was had today singing, rhyming, enjoying cuddles and reading a funny storybook at our Sea Creature themed Bookbug Session today! Thank you to everyone who came along. Can’t wait for next time!
#scottishbooktrust

Many thanks to parents and grandparents who read stories to the children for #nationalstorytellingweek. Some of the stories were in Urdu, Irish Gaelic and Polish 📖

We have been super busy using junk modelling to create cars and masks using mathematical language.
We have also been super creative and curious about “under the sea” crating wonderful fish tanks ☺️

We have enjoyed our outdoor loose parts to create some fantastic structures. So far we have made a bus, a pirate ship and a train. #STEM #imagination #looseparts

We have been super busy tidying up our vegetable garden to get ready for the new growing season ? Team work makes the dream work. #vegetablegarden #growing #teamwork

Today we decided we would like to try something different when we paint so we turned one of turned one of our tables upside down a wrapped it clingfilm giving a fantastic canvas for our wonderful art work. #creativity #art #markmaking #imagination #finemotorskills

We have enjoyed our book of the week the 3 little pigs so much we decided to make some props so we could act out the story. #literacy #storytime #roleplay #creativity

We have been exploring sensory play shaving foam in our craft area. It has been so much fun and we have loved getting our hands in the foam to experiment and mark make. #art #sensoryplay #markmaking #finemotorskills #exploration

We have been exploring our book of the week The Three Little Pigs. Using story puppets we have retelling the story and role playing with the characters. #literacy #storytelling #roleplay

We have been been having so much fun in our craft area with junk modelling and made some fabulous creations.
#creativity #imagination #art

Today we had lots of fun playing “snake slalom“ on bikes. Most of the children have joined while developing their skills of waiting and turn taking.
Children have demonstrated great gross motor skills as well as balance and coordination.
#balance
#playonpedals
#safetyawerness
#outdoorplay

What a Marvellous Meal Times our successful learners are having this week! Yesterday we baked delicious bread for soup where we used non standards units to measure. Today we made delicious soup for our lunch tomorrow, we can’t wait to try it ☺️
#marvellousmealtimes
#measure
#responsibilty
#skills

❄️Children showed strong interest in Christmas stories, and we believe literacy should be everywhere in the nursery. Using a Christmas book, we also promoted numeracy through decorating a gingerbread man, counting buttons, and present sorting☃️ #EarlyYears #LearningThroughPlay

This morning we re-introduced our campfire sessions 🔥
We have been learning what’s safe and unsafe round fire. The children demonstrated great listening skills and we are now ready to make toast on the campfire next week 🔥🍞☺️

More ice for our curious and adventurous learners ❄️
We enjoyed saving frozen sea creatures and going on an ice hunt round the garden comparing different sizes of ice ☺️

Choosing new stories from our book swap then writing our names to stick on our new books then sharing the stories with our friends 📖More ways to celebrate Book Week Scotland #ScottishBookTrust

This morning we enjoy exploring the change in the weather. We used hammers to smash the ice and observe the change in properties of water. 💦 ❄️
We used great problem solving skills to melt the ice in warm water 💧

Story time at St Francis Xavier’s ELC for Book Week Scotland 📖Some children listened to our story of the week Pirates Love Underpants, voted by the children! We had parents reading stories.Some stories were in Polish 🇵🇱.We even had children sharing favourite stories from home! #ScottishBookTrust

What a busy day with visitors at St Francis Xavier’s ELC📖We had a special story in Spanish 🇪🇸 from a family member and a visit from local author Carrie Taylor who read her book My Little Brother Is So Annoying! Thank you so much for reading to us on Book Week Scotland #ScottishBookTrust

Many thanks to our special visitor today who came to remind the children about road safety. The children gave good examples of stopping, looking and listening before they cross the road with an adult #RoadSafetyWeek

Today we were busy shaking the trees to watch the leaves fall 🍂 Zero percent formal education, 100% fun and curiosity! #LearningThroughPlay #EarlyYears

Our children showed great interest in building the Three Bears’ house, which led to a brilliant idea – we decided to rebuild our shelter and turn it into a Numeracy Den! 🧱🐻 A wonderful example of child-led learning and teamwork in action. #MathsWeekScot #LearningThroughPlay

It’s amazing how much learning can come from one simple woodwork activity! 🪵✏️ Children wrote the first letter of their name, counted nails, used hammers safely, and weaved yarn to form their letter – building fine motor skills and confidence. #LearningThroughPlay #woodwork #STEM

During out baking activity today, the children were concentrating and focused on what they were doing while using standard units to measure ingredients to make scones.

Today we harvested our nursery potatoes 🥔 The children compared sizes, counted carefully, and one child joyfully exclaimed, “It’s like a treasure hunt, guys!” 🌱✨ #EarlyYears #OutdoorLearning #NurseryLife #LearningThroughPlay

Maths is all around us – even in the sandpit! 🎂 We baked birthday cakes with 5 candles, remembered the number 0, and when we shared our cake, we discovered it could be whole, halved or quartered. #MathsWeekScot #LearningThroughPlay

Navigating Bee Bot using directional and positional language to co-ordinate the movement. Developing a sense of length during play experiences #mathsweekscotland

Singing our nursery rhyme of the week 1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive the children further developed their imaginative play skills as they used their fishing rods to catch fish from the pirate ship while some children looked for numbered boats in the water tray #mathsweekscotland

Reduce, reuse, recycle! ♻️

The annual uniform exchange takes place soon.

Please see the attached images for more details.

🎨 Our art area has been buzzing with creativity! From drawing monsters to making spoon dolls, wrapping gifts, and crafting mobile phones — our wonderful children never run out of ideas.💡🧒👧 #NurseryLife #CreativeKids #ArtFun